Brent Bozell: Hillary Protected by Media

The mainstream media have consistently treated Hillary Clinton with kid gloves, ignoring Clinton scandals and refusing to ask tough questions even as she seeks the presidency, charges Brent Bozell, president of the Media Research Council.

In the new book “Whitewash: How the Media Are Paving Hillary Clinton’s Path to the Presidency,” Bozell and co-author Tim Graham examine the history of the media’s unabashed support of Hillary and their role as the “front line of defense” against negative Clinton reporting.

In an exclusive Newsmax interview, Bozell also asserts that Hillary is far more left-wing than her husband Bill — and discloses her secret agenda for making Barack Obama her vice presidential running mate.

Newsmax: How has the media reacted to your book?

Bozell: By the absence of any coverage. They simply ignore any criticism of Hillary Clinton, or criticism of themselves.

Newsmax: Have you been treated fairly by interviewers?

Bozell: Conservatives will talk about it. The sad reality of today's political discourse is that conservatives are interested in one conversation, and liberals are interested in another. If I do an interview on a National Public Radio type of station, it is going to be hostile because they won't tolerate any criticism of themselves. Which is extraordinary given that the liberals purport to be the most tolerant of people.

Newsmax: Why are so many people in the media willing to prostitute themselves to support, defend and protect Hillary?

Bozell: It’s more than political. It's the cultural allegiance. She is the ultimate product of the 60s generation. She is the Woodstock candidate. They have a cultural allegiance to her that transcends the political allegiance. They see in her someone who is far more committed to a left-wing ideology than her husband was. Therefore they're going to be far more supportive of her, which of course is a contradiction in the sense that while they find that she is the toughest, most brilliant woman in the world, they won't ask her a single tough question that has any substance to it.

Newsmax: Is it not partly because she won't allow them access to ask the tough questions?

Bozell: That is absolutely the case. The interviews are so controlled, as we explain throughout the book. Time and again it is a controlled media format. Her entire 2006 summer campaign was a controlled media format and yet no one in the press uttered a word of complaint about this.

Were a Republican to run this kind of campaign, he would never hear the end of it. The press corps would simply not play by those rules.

Newsmax: Given the fact that the Clinton machine is notorious for its underhanded attacks on enemies, why does the media allow Hillary to get away with her constant attacks on the so-called Republican attack machine without questioning her own?

Bozell: Because they've been doing it for years and because they are supportive of it from the standpoint that the ends justify the means. Her vast right-wing conspiracy accusation was leveled in an attempt to demonstrate that conservatives were inventing Monica Lewinsky.

When Tim Russert had the audacity to ask her in the 2000 campaign if she was going to apologize for that, he caught unmitigated hell from the left. They believe, just as she believes, that the ends justify the means, so vicious attacks on anyone are perfectly acceptable if it advances the political agenda of the Clinton machine.

Newsmax: Why is the oft-repeated claim that nobody has been more investigated that Hillary false?

Bozell: Our “Whitewash” book proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that that statement is an absolute farce. If you look at the alphabet soup of Clinton scandals, particularly the ones involving Hillary, you can't help but reach one conclusion: In any investigation there are three stages — the accusation, the investigation, and the resolution, where you get to the bottom of it. And if you go through the Clinton scandals, I would challenge you to name me a single one where there's ever been a resolution.

Where the Clinton scandals were concerned, over and over, time and again, as soon as one was raised the person raising the suggestion of a scandal was attacked and the scandals were dropped. So when you say she's the most investigated politician in history, it is an absolute joke.

Look at the Monica Lewinsky story – [the claim] that Hillary wasn't involved. She certainly was involved in the cover-up. She certainly was involved in a ruthless attack on Republicans and conservatives, and yet she was made to be the victim.

Newsmax: Hasn’t she played the victim even though she was well aware that this thing with Monica was going on?

Bozell: Not only was she well aware, she hired detectives to follow her husband. All this is a matter of fact. As I said before, people don't care about books about Hillary - unless they’re by Hillary. Any book that has any criticism of Hillary is immediately dismissed or ignored.

But when Hillary comes out giving her side of the story, they can't get to her fast enough. The rose petals are strewn in her path, day after day on the “Today” show to allow her to tell her side of the story.

All you have to do is read her book and see the dishonesty. On August 15, 1998, the day she learned about Bill’s infidelity with Lewinsky, according to Hillary she was gasping for air, she couldn't breathe and confronted her husband with the awful truth.

Guess what? That was two weeks after the entire country learned about the blue-stained dress. Therefore Hillary would have us believe the entire country knew about his philandering, but she only learned about it two weeks later.

Newsmax: Your book is more an attack on the media than it is an attack on Hillary.

Bozell: It is not meant to be an attack on Hillary. It is meant to be simply a documentation of how the media have been her front line of defense on every scandal that she's been a party to. Either a wall was put up, or they simply refused to cover it, or they built the wall and then brought out the cannon and fired on anybody who had audacity to bring up something negative about her. This pattern can be traced back 15 years.

Newsmax: Is the alternative media, which is not accepting the canonization of Hillary Clinton, having any effect on her reputation?

Bozell: It is having a greater effect than we can possibly imagine. If the entire country had only the insights of the so-called mainstream media – there’s nothing mainstream about it, it’s the old media - on which to base its judgments, then you would have the most miserably misinformed public unimaginable.

It is only because of the alternative media, and only because the alternative media will talk about this, that the truth about Hillary comes out.

Newsmax: Was the recent revelation in Bob Novak’s column — that the Clintons had information about an alleged scandal involving Barack Obama but were not using it — a veiled warning to Obama?

Bozell: Unquestionably. That was the warning that they were sending. With the Clinton machine nothing is coincidental.

Newsmax: Is it having any effect on him?

Bozell: I suspect not because I suspect that whatever it was it’s going to come out anyway. The Clinton machine always has its nuclear arsenal. But it does not want to come out with it if it can be avoided because he is a potential vice president candidate.

I think they would like to thoroughly whip him in the primaries, to have him give up early and then perhaps to have him molded as a vice presidential candidate who would be very attractive on a ticket. If they went to that nuclear option you could kiss that goodbye.

Newsmax: Is Hillary beginning to lose popularity?

Bozell: Yes she is. She is always going to be the 50-50 candidate where half the country loves her and half the country hates her. In recent days she’s given those who don't like her reasons to remember why it is they don't like her. Talk radio particularly, and the Internet, have come alive with those stories.

So that 50 percent is rising up again, and as that 50 percent rises, then people who might otherwise be inclined in her favor begin to wonder, ‘Can she win this thing?’ Among Democrats that is the single biggest question Democrats have – can she win in a general campaign given her overwhelming negatives?

The dislike runs very, very deep because there are conservatives who believe she is vicious, and I think there are some liberals who believe that as well. Like him or loathe him, you get the feeling that you could enjoy having a beer with Bill Clinton. You don't get the feeling that you could enjoy anything with Hillary Clinton – except maybe anesthesia.

The mainstream media have consistently treated Hillary Clinton with kid gloves, ignoring Clinton scandals and refusing to ask tough questions even as she seeks the presidency, charges Brent Bozell, president of the Media Research Council.In the new book “Whitewash: How the...